Past and Present
by Sarryn
Summary: As a Sarafan knight, Raziel had fallen in love. Now, in the confrontation between his fallen self and Sarafan counterpart, he encounters her again. Bitter Romance, dark. Switches between past and present. Spoilers for SR2.
1. Remember Me Gentle

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"Going to see your little healer?"

Raziel strode across the hall, but paused at his comrade's mocking tone. He waved away Dumah's sly grin irritably. Several more catcalls reached his ears and he raised a single finger salute in their directions. With an exasperated sigh he finished crossing the main hall. They, his brethren in arms, never seemed to tire of teasing him about the young healer currently working in the infirmary. 

The door closed and the rest of their comments faded away in the resounding echo. He turned to the left and continued, walking at a brisk pace. Even if he hadn't walked the corridor more times than he could remember, the pitiful groans of the injured and dying would lead him to the infirmary. Sometimes late night their would drag him into an uneasy wakefulness. The pained voices of his fellow hunters served to reaffirm his determination to wipe out the vampiric plague. How many of his friends, allies, and confidants had come back terribly wounded? How many had never returned at least a live? 

The numbers bore deep into his mind until he had to stop walking and concentrate, instead, on his burgeoning rage. After a few moments of carefully regulated breathing he continued. 

Upon entering, Raziel found the healer Tanim running between her patients with brisk efficiency. She paused a moment to grace him with a tired smile, all her smiles seemed to be tired nowadays, before racing off to assist another wounded man. 

He watched her with amusement. Her black hair had escaped its braid and defied all her attempts to confine it. Every once in a while she would blow a wisp away as she worked, but it settled back unperturbed.

"What can I do for you, lord Raziel?" she inquired between moments of frenetic activity. A tired glint of mischievous humor shone in her dark purple eyes.

"I see you have quite a lot of men to take care of, healer Tanim." She smiled as he replied with her title. 

"No, they're boys straight out of short trews," she quipped. Several disgruntled comments met her assertion. 

"They have seen combat. They are men now."

"As you say." She always said that when she knew that neither of them would change their mind nor relent. It was her way of acknowledging his opinion while maintaining her own. 

"I was going to ask if you would like to come on a walk with me, but you look a little busy."

"It's because these 'men' of yours are fools and lucky to be…breathing." He noted the pause where she hesitated in saying 'alive'. 

"We are fighting a holy war," he said with pride. She nodded in a distracted manner. Apparently one of her patients needed help. 

"This evening, Raziel, meet me here." She touched his cheek lightly with a fingertip and then whirled away. 

~~~

Tanim paled marble white, as Raziel led her onto the grassy moor about the Sarafan fortress. Her purple eyes paused upon each forest of wooden spears and the strange fruits hanging from each. The latest vampire dead sagged like insects pinned in an examining case. He gazed upon their screaming, agonized faces with righteous pleasure. 

"How horrible." Her soft voice drew his gaze to her. 

"They were only vampires," he responded with a nonchalant shrug. She turned and met his eyes. The look in them was both reproachful and sad. 

"They were living beings." He issued a short back of laughter, but quieted at her pointed glare. 

"They are corpses infested with a demonic spirit. How else would you explain their appearance?" He expected her to respond with, "As you say", like usual, but her face merely smoothed into expressionless planes. He had seen that look before, not directed at him until now, and it boded ill for the receiver. It was as if her personality, her soul had fled somewhere else and she was merely a marionette whose strings were being pulled by a deliberate puppeteer. 

"They bleed when cut, feel pain, anger. They form communities and seek vengeance for wrongs done to them. Are we not like that?"

"But that doesn't mean they live," he retorted. Their first argument, this was their very first one. Her face became even more expressionless, if that was possible. Her eyes held the only animation and that was frighteningly icy. He stood there, feeling angry and hurt that she didn't approve, and tried to justify himself.

"Stop, Raziel." She placed one pale hand across his mouth and stifled his outpouring of reasons. Emotion flooded into her face and brought the vivacious animation back that always held him in such a helpless thrall. "I love you."

A sharp pang bit his heart in two and left it bleeding inside his chest at her suddenly spoken words. Hundreds of thoughts, each demanding equal attention, boiled through his brain and rolled into and around each other. He opened and closed his mouth helplessly under her hand, as he tried to formulate a reply. 

"It's okay. I love you and it's that simple. I could see that I was loosing you with that argument and it hurt. Just…just don't take me on walks where these corpses can be seen, please." Then Tanim removed her hand and kissed him, the briefest brush of silk, tenderly on the lips. "Let's go back." 

She took his limp hand and led him back inside like an adult leading a particularly reticent child.

"I…love you, too," he stuttered lamely at the threshold of the fortress. She smiled in her usual tired fashion, but an extra brilliant sparkle shone in her eyes. 

"Thought so."

~~~

A soft gasp wrenched my attention away from the glorifying visage of the slain Turel. I turned, reaver bloodied and ready for more violence, and stopped. 

"T-Tanim?"

~~~

That's the first chapter. Thank you for reading. I hoped you enjoyed it. The Italics happen in the past and the normal words happen in the present of SR2 after Raziel kills Turel. I usually write for anime series so this is quite a bit different. Please review with your comments or thoughts. Any questions you have I will try to answer in the next chapter.


	2. Bitterness

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"I don't like to think of the world." Raziel glanced over at Tanim who lay on her back and stared up at the arching dome of stars. A peaceful breeze played with his black bangs and ruffled her plain dress. He returned his eyes to the heavens.

"Why not?"

"It's too big and there's too many bad things in it." He laughed softly in response. From the corner of his eye he saw her watching him in questioning silence.

"I like it that way. I have a purpose and space to complete it in." 

"As you say. If you could change one thing in your life what would you change?" she asked propping herself up on one elbow to get a better look at him. He kept his gaze locked on the coruscating flecks of light and tried to organize his wildly flying thoughts. 

"I don't know. Maybe…less vampires and…more time to spend with you."

"That didn't sound definite," she laughed tapping his nose. He snapped playfully at her finger and she pulled it out of reach with a startled squeak. 

"I would like to spend more time with you, though." The breeze stilled and her soft breathing filled the silence between them. He saw her try to smile and fail. Again a sharp dagger sliced into the meat of his heart and dug deeper as he waited for her reply. 

"That would…would be nice. But then there's reality…and vampires. You have to hunt them. That is your fate and I will stay here and help the injured. I doubt either of us will see the end of this conflict." Her pale face became clouded with troubled thoughts and a veil of apprehension covered her eyes.

"Tanim, don't be pessimistic. That's my job." 

"And you do a fine enough job of that for all of Nosgoth," she laughed. The ringing cadence of her own voice dispelled the worries from her face. He liked her better that way. She shouldn't have to look sorrowful if he had any say in the matter.

~~~

"Who…Raziel? No, you have his voice, but you are not him," Tanim told me with determined firmness as she slowly inched back through the door behind her. How could I explain it to her? I still existed as a Sarafan zealot in this time and as my own ravaged, blue body. 

My memory of her, her tired smile and gently mischievous eyes, had fled upon my resurrection as a vampire, but now it returned with bitter vengeance. The familiar pain assailed the silent organ that hung still in my chest for my heart beat no more. I couldn't believe I had forgotten her. Apart from my duty as a Sarafan warrior she had been my sole anchor to the world. She had been the light that drove the shadows from my heart and troubled thoughts from my mind. And now she stood, breathing and vibrant, before me and cringed every time she met my eyes. 

I saw myself as she must and the horror my appearance truly drove deep into my consciousness. I loved her in life and I still felt a vestige of that emotion in my un-death. Yet the loathing and terror etching cruel lines into her beautiful face stoked the writhing inferno of my barely satiated rage. How dare she regard me with such revulsion? Was I not her love?

No, I no longer held that privilege. It had died along with my mortal life. She belonged to my Sarafan self. The self that I planned on killing if he didn't yield Janos' heart. I had promised long ago never to put sorrow in her eyes, but I would be breaking that promise. Would she cry for her dead lover? I was sure she would.

I wanted nothing more than to erase Tanim from my conscious memory and finish this wending course fate seemed determined to put me on. Unfortunately she stood in the doorway that I desired passage through. Like so many aspects of my past she would not fade away quietly. 

"Stand aside, wench"–Gods how my voice quavered–"I need to pass through that door." She glanced over her shoulder and then back at me. As if reading the direction of my murderous thoughts, she planted herself firmly, despite the fine trembling I detected in her body, in the door's threshold. 

"You can't. I won't allow you to," she stated. "Please, go back. I understand why you're doing this. We, the Sarafan, have ki–"

"No. You have no idea why I'm doing this. You don't understand." She flinched and the tiny movement ripped into me.

"Stop it."

"What?" Now what did she want? She had always hated the war between vampires and Sarafan. Even now she tried to forestall the loss of more life by attempting to convince me to turn back.

"Stop using his voice. If I wasn't looking at you I would swear you were him." She could have said a hundred things, made a hundred pleadings, yet she merely asked me to employ another voice. Little did she know that that was my true voice.

"I'm afraid I cannot accommodate you, my dear. This is the only voice I shall ever have." 

"What would you have of this place? Obviously you have murdered these valiant men and…?"

"I seek the heart of Janos Audron and the stolen Soul Reaver." I held the Reaver out to show her that one of my goals had been accomplished.

"And these items are worth all this…blood?" She gestured towards the spreading pools of crimson surrounding the corpses of my former brethren. I knew her powers of persuasion and I knew how dangerous her very vivacity could be. Once I had easily drowned in the rolling cadence of her words and even now I could feel them reviving long dead emotions. 

"You can't change the past or your life." Her eyes swept up and pinned me with a piercing look. Those same far-seeing eyes swept over my ravaged visage, avoiding my abnormally glowing eyes, and down my body with a degree of attention she had not showed upon first meeting. 

"How? This cannot be true. You…Raziel?" Her shoulders slumped, as defeat weighed her down. I witnessed the beginning of the end of her noble spirit. I had done something far worse than bring sorrow to her eyes. I had broken her spirit. But it was she who had realized the truth and so I couldn't take complete blame. Could I?

~~~

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"I want you to lie to me," Tanim whispered as she pressed her face against Raziel's broad chest. He stared at her dark head in surprise.

"What do you mean?"

"Tell me you'll never leave me. Tell me that we'll be together forever." She looked up, tears shimmering among her sooty lashes, and wrapped her arms tighter about his shoulders.

"I won't lie to you. We will be together and I will never let you go," he told her fervently. She laughed at him sadly.

"Don't say that. Don't say it like it's the truth. Death is waiting patiently in the shadows for us with every breath. I just want a lie to feel safe in. A little lie to keep the nightmares away for tonight." He kissed her forehead, her nose and eyelids. He kissed away the worry knitting her brows and then paid homage to her trembling mouth. 

"Forever, Tanim. I swear it."

"I'll love you no matter what. Whatever happens I'll love you. Don't forget that." She said that as if she knew something was coming to irrevocably change their lives.

~~~

Tanim, a horrible shuddering passing through her body, staggered forward, one arm outstretched in a manner that was supplicant and agonized. Trembling, she reached towards me and I cringed away. Hurt flickered in her eyes and she withdrew her hand. In that moment I came to a truly horrifying realization; now that she knew the Sarafan Raziel and I were the same being her love now transferred to encompass my grotesque self. 

She had promised, long ago, to love him, me, no matter what and she, unlike myself, rarely broke a promise. And now because of that promise she regarded me with a mixture of love and anguish. 

"What happened? You aren't a vampire, I don't think," she murmured tracing my features with sorrowful eyes and then moving on to my deformed, three clawed hands and cloven feet.

"I was. Now I am something…different." 

"Don't do it, Raziel. Please don't take yourself away from me," she cried before throwing her slender arms about me and burying her face against my emaciated chest. She knew, by the gods she knew my intentions better than I did. I stared down at her quivering form, felt her desperately tight embrace, and longed for things to be different. I had been wrong so many centuries past. I would change the one thing that I had no power to. 

"I'm sorry," I told her lamely. Her grip on my dead flesh tightened and her soft sobbing pierced my ears.

"This is suicide. I…I don't want you to die. I want you to stay with me." Suicide, I hadn't thought of it in quite that light. I knew I would be murdering myself, but suicide? I knew she wasn't speaking of myself as I stood in her arms. She meant myself as a Sarafan. Yet fate, no matter how I struggled against its inevitable tides, had pulled us into a situation from which there was only one outcome. 

She turned her face to mine, meeting my glowing eyes without hesitation or fear. I couldn't help it as I lifted my hand and traced the shimmering path of her tears with a single claw. I expected her to wince, to move away, but she proved me wrong like so many times before. 

I thought only anger and hatred could last an eternity. Only they could surmount all odds and obstacles. I know mine had. Apparently her unreasoning love could surpass all conceivable limitations and fall upon such a wretched creature as myself simply because she had loved my other self. 

"There's nothing I can do, is there?" She held my clawed hand against her face and bestowed a light kiss upon my palm. "You will enter the chamber yonder and kill him, yourself."

"If he doesn't give me the heart," I replied stiffly. She looked away and nodded sorrowfully.

"You are to be your own damnation. You hate him, I can see that, and everything he stands for. Do you hate me now?" Her earnest purple eyes searched my face and her grip upon my hand tightened.

"No…"

"But you no longer love me either," she said with resigned finality. Then she raised herself on her tiptoes and sprinkled airy kisses upon whatever part of my face she could reach. She even kissed the edge of my cloak where it hid the true horror of my monstrous deformity. With each touch I remembered a thousand pleasures and intimacies with her from centuries, millennia, past that, for her, might have occurred last night.

"Go, Raziel, and fulfill your vile mission. I cannot stop you and I won't." She pulled away from me and stared at the ground as if it held the answers she sought.

"Tanim…"

"Don't say anything. I knew someone or something would take him, you, away from me." She laughed coldly. "I always knew that. It's just that…I never thought it would be yourself." I reached for her in a moment of blind desperation. My mind reeled with the potent memories of our time together and the unadulterated desire to just hold her in my arms and be held by her in return.

"No." She screamed that one word and froze my body in a moment of perfect awareness. Dashing tears from her eyes, she raced past me and I made no move to stop her. She had renounced me as surely as I planned on renouncing my Sarafan self. The funny thing was she never stopped loving me even after her rejection.

~~~

Forgot the disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue. Thank you. Please review. Thank you.


	3. Unborn Hope, Living Madness

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"You really should be more careful out there," Tanim admonished Raziel, as she carefully stitched closed a wound on his back. He chuckled softly and then stopped when she smacked on the head. "Don't move." He wished the numbing salve she had put on his wound had also been put on his head. For such a fragile looking female she could hit quite hard when occasion warranted it. 

Around them healers worked diligently upon wounded fighters, while assistants scurried about with surgical equipment, bloodied bandages and water. Everyone moved about with frantic urgency as the latest injured arrived with the aid of fellow soldiers. He noticed several sheet covered bodies pushed unobtrusively against a wall, more valiant men and women who would never rise to fight again. 

"Almost done."

He would kill every single vampire in Nosgoth. They had no place in the world. They were nothing but filthy parasitic fiends devoid of compassion or humanity. The sight of their vile faces twisted in agony filled him with righteous ecstasy. Never before had he felt more alive. Never before had he been so sure of his convictions. They would pay for every human lost in today's battle. He would take reparations from their moldering flesh. 

"Sit up. I don't want you to do anything strenuous for a week or you'll rip out the stitches," Tanim said giving his shoulder a pat. 

"Anything?" he asked huskily. 

"If those stitches that I worked so hard on come out, I will make sure you won't be moving for at least a month." The prim look on her tired face set him laughing. 

"I believe you." He caught her arm and pulled her in for a quick kiss. "On the roof tonight." She glanced around, a light blush staining her cheeks, and then ducked her head in acquiescence. 

"I hope the stars are out." She caressed his face briefly before dashing off to assist another patient. He watched her for a moment, her graceful yet hurried movements and the way she blew wisps of hair from her face. Every moment he spent with her he could see a little more of his future. Tanim had sown a longing for a family within him. He hadn't told her that, but she was too observant not to know.

For a moment he wished that he could lay down his sword, but then duty reasserted its importance and he pushed the distracting thought aside. There would be time for such domestic fantasies once all the vampires were gone. 

~~~

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Sprinkled across the arching dome of heaven, stars coruscated lazily between silent drifts of clouds. Raziel emerged to find Tanim already waiting for him. She lay upon her back and gazed peacefully at the night's sky. A tender smile tugged his lips upwards as she reached up as if she wanted to grasp hold of a star.

"Reaching for the stars, healer Tanim?" She laughed and lowered her hand.

"Just thinking." She rolled over and smiled with welcome up at him. "I wish we could always watch the stars together."

"And why couldn't we?" he inquired as he sat next to her. She placed one pale hand on his knee and raised herself slightly to receive his kiss. 

"I just wish the fighting was over. Then we really could watch the stars every night."

"Even when it rains?"

"Especially when it rains," she laughed. 

"You are crazy, Tanim. Crazy and wonderful." Sighing happily, she rested her head in his lap. Absently he stroked her dark hair, letting it run like liquid darkness through his fingers. "This war might be over soon." 

"What? Why…how?" He avoided her curious eyes and instead stared purposefully across the snow-covered moor below the fortress. 

"Lord Moebius has found a way to enter the aerial lair of Janos Audron."

"I see."

"He says if we kill that parasite then the rest will fall shortly thereafter."

"I see."

"Tanim, then the war will be over. The parasites will perish without the life force of their progenitor, or so Moebius says."

"Please don't talk about the fighting, Raziel," she murmured softly. He glanced down and met her tired eyes. "I will be glad when it's all over, though." A soft smile curved her lips for a moment before fading. 

"When the vermin are dead, we will take a walk on the moor and watch the stars."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

~~~

I left the spectral realm to find Tanim knelt before me. Kain and the Reaver were gone, but my mortal body and former love remained. She cradled him, me, and rocked back and forth, all the while sobbing silently. She barely acknowledged my return.

"No, Raziel, no," she sobbed as she rocked my corpse and lay kisses upon the rapidly cooling flesh. 

I stood there and my voice died. What could I say to her? I had killed and damned her one true love and by doing that I brought our fate full circle. No, not quite full circle, if Kain was to be trusted. Something had changed, but not this sad moment. I could hate Kain all over again. Not that I had ever stopped hating him completely. 

"You promised we'd watch the stars on the moor. You said everything would be over." Her anguished voice swung my attention back to her. She traced the features of my mortal self with a carmine hand. As her bloody fingers smeared my life's blood upon my face, his actually, she let loose a wrenching keen. 

I stepped towards her and her pained eyes focused on me. I expected, almost hoped, to see hate reflected in those purple discs. Gods, she still loved me as him. She really couldn't differentiate between us. 

"It didn't work did it?"

"What?" My voice came out in a startled squawk, as she suddenly addressed me. 

"Killing Janos Audron didn't stem the vampiric tide, did it?" She laughed quietly, the beginnings of madness tingeing her dulcet voice. I shook my head. "Then all you did, all the fighting, was for nothing."

"Tanim." I crouched before her and tried to remove her grip on my other self's corpse. She refused to yield it to me and I could only take it by breaking her fingers. I couldn't do that. I couldn't inflict more pain on her.

"Go, Raziel. You are not mine here. I can't have you," she told me coldly, lovingly. I obeyed her, obeyed the unwavering love and anguish in her expressive eyes. 

"I am sorry," I murmured, turning away.

"That's alright. I still have something to live for." I looked over my shoulder and saw her gently place my corpse upon the ground. While I watched, she protectively placed her blood-smeared hands upon her stomach. 

My mind rolled upon this revelation and all I could do was flee, run away like the coward I was. As I raced through the fortress, I could hear her singing mad little lullabies to the unborn child in her womb, my child in her womb.

~~~

Thank you for reading this fic. I hoped it was enjoyable for you. I think it will be finished in another chapter or so. After that I do have some vague ideas for a sequel, but it probably won't happen because I'm lazy. Anyway, please review with any ideas or comments.


	4. Regrets of the Soul

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"It's all over now," Raziel declared swinging a confusedly jubilant Tanim about in a circle.

"What? (Be careful, your stitches are still fresh)." He set her down, but kept a firm grip on her in case she decided to wiggle free. To hell with his stitches, he thought He had never felt healthier or more alive in his life. 

"We have slain that vile beast Janos Audron and taken his black heart. (The stitches are fine)." The tired sparkle in her eyes dimmed with the mention of his profession, but he plowed ahead determinedly. "Lord Moebius has promised that vermin will start to decline now that we have severed their progenitor. You can gather herbs in the moor without fear of being attacked. We all will be able to live normal lives."

"You would never be happy with a normal life, Raziel," she sighed with a mixture of happiness and sorrow. Only she could mix such contradictory emotions into a single exhalation of breath. "You're special. You're destined for something large. I can feel it."

"You can? It's probably putting up with you." She attempted to give him a light punch in the shoulder, but he kept her arms firmly trapped in case of her retaliation for his comment. 

"I have something important to tell you and now is as good a time as any, I guess," Tanim told him, a deep blush pouring color into her normally pale cheeks. 

"What?"

"Well, it's…you see, I think…Okay, I can do this…I'm–" 

The air shattered under the burden of a volley of terrified screams. Reflexively he tightened his arms about her. She winced slightly and tried to follow his gaze about the circular room.

"The Circle…"

"Vampires?" she questioned.

"Raziel," Turel yelled as he flung the door open. The two lovers waited with varying degrees of impatience while the man struggled to catch his breath. "Two demons have breached the sanctuary. Lord Moebius has ordered us to guard the Heart while he and Malek take care of the Circle."

"Where are–?"

"The other knights are already stationed in the planned defensive arrangement. I'm about to take up my post. Prepare yourself." Turel's keen eyes took in the horrified healer and his leader's protective grip about her. "You should have kept your tryst to a less…conspicuous area, Raziel. One of the fiends is headed this way and your lady will most likely encounter it."

"Go on, Turel. We shall be fine," Raziel grated out. The man sketched a sardonic bow before retreating to his assigned post. "Dammit."

"You aren't going to fight are you?" Tanim demanded angrily. 

"Would you have me a pacifist at such a time?" he snapped.

"Your wound hasn't healed. If you fight this creature, you will tear out my stitches. You, my dear, are at a serious physical disadvantage." He couldn't help but laugh at her perturbed and indignant look. Gently he ran a finger down the creases in her forehead.

"Four other Elite Knights are with ready swords outside this room. Only a god or something invincible could get through. As far as I know, gods have never bothered with the affairs of men and no creature is invincible. Janos Audron is proof of that."

"Raziel…" She looked away even as she seemed to be on the edge of divulging some urgent parcel of information. He captured her chin in his hand and forced her to look him in the eye.

"Don't worry, Tanim. Every thing will be fine. I'll be fine. We'll talk later."

"If there will be a later."

"There will."

He wasted a few seconds to lose himself in her sad mouth and tired, vibrant life. 

"Please take care. I love you," she whispered before following Turel's exit from the room.

"I love you too."

~~~

Raziel glared with defiant courage at the blue monstrosity, strangely elegant in its desiccated movements, before him. A chaotic band of worries struck a discordant march in his brain and sang her name, Tanim, through his reeling mind. She had left his presence mere moments before and now this creature had replaced her. And what of her? Was she alive?

"So you have slain my comrades. Did you enjoy it fiend?" The creature regarded him with in a manner that bespoke of weightier thoughts distracting it. 

"Give me the heart and I will spare your life."

"Did you spare hers?" Raziel demanded coldly as he slowly drew his sword from its sheath. The creature's glowing eyes flared briefly under the pressure of some emotion. 

"If I told you I haven't harmed her physically, would you accept that?"

"And emotionally, mentally? What did you do, you vile wretch?"

"Give me the heart of Janos Audron and you will find out," the creature replied brusquely. 

"I will draw answers from your eviscerated corpse," Raziel yelled. The creature nodded as if he knew there would be no other outcome. 

~~~

I remember the Sanctuary both in its glorious newness and the decayed carcass of my vampiric rebirth. I have traversed its echoing, sometimes leaky, halls and the area about it for countless years. I know every cranny and every slight raise of earth, yet I never found this single glen. Perhaps that is how it should have been for I would not have known the significance of the two stone edifices cradled in a lush spread of grass that defied the corruption of the land. 

From the weathered chisel-work the final months of Tanim's life unfolded before me. Yes, she had only survived for a span of seven months after I killed my mortal self. The larger stone marker held her precious name and the dates of her birth and death. The smaller was that of our child.

The baby, a boy for she had named it after myself, or rather my other self, had lived for only a couple of days. The date of Tanim's death placed it one day later. She had told me that she had something to live for and when that went away she…

I remember the horror and sorrow, and love gods be damned, in her tired eyes when she saw my changed countenance. She had told me, begged me, not to commit the suicide of destiny's ordinance. She abhorred the loss of any life, whether human or, yes, even vampire. Suicide was the lowest anathema in her heart, yet she had turned to it. I drove her to it. I broke her, her spirit, her soul, and she took her own life. 

She had been so strong, vibrant even her usual tiredness. No one could drag her from the lofty heights of her self-discovered truths. No one could do that, but the one she loved without regard to heart or time. 

But that isn't the worst I did her upon our final meeting. Even breaking every promise I ever made her doesn't surpass the final travesty I visited upon her. 

I let her die with the fallacious knowledge that I no longer loved her. 

~~~

And that's a wrap. Thank you to everyone who has read my story, and even more thanks to those who reviewed. I'm nothing thinking of a sequel, but rather a pre-quel of Raziel's life as a boy till his final moments as a human. Of course Tanim will come in as well. Then maybe I'll write a sort of independent epilogue of sorts revolving around Tanim's final seven months of life. And maybe during that, aside from another story I'm thinking of (Too many! I'm getting too far ahead of myself already!), I'll put up a true sequel. 

Anyway, please review if you feel so inclined.

Much love,

Sarryn


End file.
